On Ownership

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About Máirín Duffy

Máirín is a principal interaction designer at Red Hat. She is passionate about software freedom and free & open source tools, particularly in the creative domain: her favorite application is Inkscape. You can read more from Máirín on her blog at blog.linuxgrrl.com.

I think this is rather off the mark – there can be only one default environment, only one home page on fedoraproject.org, only one target audience that is used by FESCo as a basis for deciding between conflicting proposals.

What does this mean? I thought the primary bone of contention that started this rift was when a group of people that apparently had a pretty passionate interest in Fedora’s artwork was told that they were not needed/wanted for F15 due to a hard restriction that GNOME’s default wallpaper be used.

Their graphic never made it easy to determine exactly what they were railing against. Your graphic, though, seems to read as “F You , Make It”. That seems … unnecessarily inflammatory without some form of explanatory text, especially as I think they were trying to say “Let Us Make It” in the first place?

I disagree with ‘Mo on many things from time to time. But this whole thing just rubs me wrong. “Give our distro back”? While I wish I could agree with the statement for other reasons than the original party.

To “give back” implies they had something to begin with. This is not the case, Fedora belongs to Red Hat, they allow us to participate. I thank them for that opportunity. It’s not about “you” or “me” it’s about the myth of community ownership. At least that is the way I see it. I am still planning a party for everyone the day the “lie” stops.

I am here because if you like it or not, I like you even if we don’t always make that easy for the other. I agree with you on some issues, and as I admit, we disagree on some also.

The Girl Scout project IMO is a great concept that many can learn from.

Just dealing with upstream projects as you have is a task we can all learn from each other on.

Fedora is what we make it, we all do what we can, when we can. We may not always have solutions but we may have frustrations. Voicing frustrations with out a solution is hard not only for the person hoping to solve the problem, as you commonly are, but also for the frustrated party when told they need to come up with the solution. Sometimes we hope that someone will hear our voice and a light bulb will go off for them to provide a solution because of their different skill and experience set.

I want to support you when I can, I also want to try to respectfully disagree with you when I feel I must. This has been a point of failure in the past and I am sorry about that, but it is a goal for me for the future.

You don’t have to authorise this for the public. I just want you to know how I feel about some of the work you are doing. I know you care just as much about Fedora and it’s community as I do, people with passion butt heads sometimes when working for a common goal from different points of view.

I haven’t been enjoying Nicu’s campaign, since I mostly disagree with him on this issue.

However, yours doesn’t feel quite true either: in some areas of Fedora, no matter what your badge says, I don’t make it.

One example comes to mind: the default desktop spin. It is treated completely differently, and its team is often referred to (even by themselves) as the “Red Hat desktop team”. It makes me really doubt that if I had the inclination, time and skills I could have any say in what happens there. (note: I don’t have any of those, and I truely respect the work that this team is putting into Fedora)

A second example is that the Advisory Board is still half-appointed by Red Hat, which makes it more difficult for the wider community to entirely “make it”. (not that Red Hat has ever appointed anyone who harmed the community, even non Red-Hat employees have been appointed which is a great proof that Red Hat cares about Doing the Right Thing. The fact that those seats are reserved is still an issue though)

There are a few other examples, but I guess my point is that your badge would be much more accurate if it were saying “You (almost) make it”.

> “I don’t sit in the Senate all day or have a say in who sits on my behalf”

If that’s really the case, then yes, as far as your government is concerned, “you don’t make it”.

Now I don’t know the way the US government works, but from the Wikipedia article on the US Senate, I gather that the US Senate is actually elected by the people (the terms of each election varying from state to state).

People complain that decisions made in Fedora are out of their control. Yet many decisions are made by the governing bodies that they elect. E.g., I have seen hand-wringing about the number of Red Hat employees on the project board. Yet look at the Board wiki page and look to see how many of those RH employees were elected by the community, and NOT appointed. Look at the platform I ran on, and look the voting counts for me in the Board election. Now people are complaining that we are working towards the things that the majority of candidates voted in talked about wanting to do.

The Board has been in the process of transparently crafting that vision for the past couple of months now. Instead of actually participating in a productive manner by getting involved in the vision definition, this ridiculous campaign has been put together seemingly with the purpose to hurt people.

Speaking as a former _elected_ advisory board member..who has never been employed by Red Hat….

I have _zero_ problem with the current split between appointed and elected positions on the Board. I firmly believe appointed seats are a more appropriate tool than a strict democratic selection based the realities of the economics on how the infrastructure that makes Fedora possible is funded and maintained. Wrapping oneself in the rhetoric of democracy as panacea is at best…naive.

I’m more than happy to talk at length with you about why I am right in my beliefs in another forum if you want to have that discussion. It would be too lengthy to have here, and I don’t want to force Máirín to have to act as moderator unnecessarily.

But beyond that, I will also say that every single FPL I have personally interacted with before,during and after my tenure on the Board has _always_ been keenly aware of the need to balance perspectives within the Board when it comes to using the appointment power.

And beyond that, I’ll say that the fact that Red Hat employees continue to be _elected_ ahead of externals even though the eligible voter base is mostly made up of non-RedHatters tells me that there isn’t a substantiate problem here to be solved by moving to a more democratic process.

I would _love_ to see those who seem to be disenfranchised put a slate of like minded candidates together and _campaign_ with a platform and a plan of action as part of the existing Board elections process and get the silent majority of external contributors excited enough to actually vote for them. I guarantee you any such organized campaign for change via the established election process would have to be much more forward looking than the reactionary campaign for change we are seeing in the “take back” campaign. Based on the negativity of public statements being made right now by the leadership of the “take back” meme…I very much doubt they’d get elected. It’s really easy to make noise and to agitate in reactions to decisions you don’t agree with. It’s much harder to stand-up and raise your hand and ask your peers to raise you up into a position of responsibility for the entire project and have proactive discussions leading to proactive decision-making.

Again…all of that being said as a former _elected_ external community Board member.

In case that wasn’t clear enough: I don’t enjoy the “give back” campaign, nor do I even agree with it.

My comment was not meant to imply that I personnally find anything unacceptable, I wasn’t giving my personal opinion or any judgement.

I was simply pointing facts that tend to show that Mairin’s badge is not entirely accurate. (which incidentaly is exactly what some people have an issue with: they feel that there is no way they can “make it” and are demanding there distro back)

No slogan is entirely accurate. The reality of the inner workings of any social interaction is never so simple as to be captured entirely accurately in a slogan a few words long. Slogans by their very nature are meant to be emotive, 100% accurate. Do you _really_ think pointing out this fact is going to _help_ move the project forward?

Given that all human language is an approximation for human thought, we won’t have 100% fidelity in human communication until we all have Google neural implants. And when we do, we are all going to find out exactly what we all _think_ about each other and it won’t be pretty.

In any event, you went well beyond _fact_ in your dissection of the slogan in question and strongly implied there is some sort of substantiate problem with the process by which the Board seats are filled, further implying that in your opinion a more democratic process is necessary to address the problem. I’m more than happy to go into much greater detail in my assessment of these perceived issues (sans any discussion of badge slogans which are just a distraction) in an effort to convince you or anyone else that such opinions concerning the deficiencies about the Board representation are not supported by history or by current project topology. But I’ll do so in another forum so Mo’ doesn’t have to moderate the discussion.

Nickpicking emotive slogans for their inability to express the full depth of the complexity associated with the governance of the Fedora project and the inherent conflicts of interest between individuals and groups inside its boundaries is not going to help _us_ chart a course in defining Fedora as a project with focus and direction versus a project which is entirely diffusive in nature.

The people who don’t end up feeling a little beat up after being on it for a term or two, are probably people I don’t want on the Board at all. So with that said, I very much appreciate that fact that you are there right now. That is not to say that I agree with your opinion on everything (or anything.)

It’s a catch-22. I personally want people on the Board who are capable of working on issues where there is conflict, but I don’t want people on the Board who authentically _like_ conflict. At least one of those statements of personal preference is part of the reason why I haven’t run again (and the fact that I’m doing way too much travelling now for my dayjob).

The Board is a tough gig to be sure. I don’t have much to offer you other than mutual respect and admiration for volunteering to strap yourself to the tiger. If we are ever in the same place again, I’ll spend whatever time it takes to invent some sort of alcoholic drink which best captures what it feels like to be a Board member. I’ve been experimenting on my own and so far I haven’t really found it yet.

Look at it this way, it’s excellent training for being a town selectperson or a member of a city council.

Too good to be true, unfortunately it is not that easy. Lets see what happens when we try to get shit done(tm). Just a few examples:

In order to get things done, we founded “Fedora EMEA e.V.”, a foundation for the promotion of Fedora, but it was closed down by Red Hat Legal. Now we no longer have legal entity to handle money and organizing events has become way more difficult.

Kanarip wants to make extended life cycle happen and has gathered enough contributors, but he first is presented with a long list of questions that he needs to answer. Some of the questions require statistical data that not even the Fedora Project collects. So how can the board demand him to deliver this information?

The EMEA ambassadors want advertise Fedora with a DVD that contains all spins, but the board didn’t want to grant the trademark approval without taking a look at it first. So I did a prototype (in fact I already did it before) but the same board members that had concerns before, don’t bother to look at it. Instead they ask more questions and raise more concerns, many of them based on false assumption and missing information. I tried to address all concerns and answer all questions but I ended up with fighting people who do not even bother to look at our work. I was asked to do a wiki page to collect all information and have a place for discussions. So I did, but again nothing happened. The talk page is still empty.

Contributors who want to move forward with Fedora are more and more blocked by red tape or stubborn people. Do you really think it is *our* distro and we can *make* *things* *happen*?

I think it depends how you define constructive. I have been trying to be constructive and answered all the questions that came up. On the other hand I don’t feel constructive in the sense of getting shit done because it took me 3 months to get a simple approval. This is frustrating for both sides.

If you want us to make Fedora happen why don’t you do your part to make it happen? In the case of the multi-desktop DVD this means: Collect enough information to make a qualified decision, but instead many of your questions and concerns were based on false assumptions. After 10 weeks you still claimed incorrect things about the boot menu and you had known that if you just looked at it. After that you still had concerns about QA while the leader of our QA team already said he had no objections.

Sorry I speak up on your blog but “You make it” sounds sarcastic to me. I would love to make it but we are being blocked.

Did you do any of the things I requested for the boot menu? Last I checked you had not. Since I don’t really have time to download and burn a DVD to test it (I have no DVD burner as it is) I don’t think asking for a screenshot of the boot menu is really so much of a hardship.

Jared already posted the screenshot in response to your mail. It showed the nested menu and GNOME was called “Desktop” and was the default selection. If you have more requests, please add them to the talk section of the wiki page I created.

You don’t have the time to download a DVD? When you suggested to switch to a full anaconda for installation you had fantastic download rates “1.5 hours (mostly idle)”.

No, I don’t have time to download a DVD. You don’t have time to take a screenshot of something you already have set up? Seriously? Are you *trying* to make it harder for us to approve this for you because it sure seems like it. And maybe KVM will do but I have no idea how to do that. I’m not as technical as you. Why not save yourself the trouble of having to write up a howto and just take a screenshot? IT. TAKES. FIVE. SECONDS.

So, i suppose i can make a custom Fedora distro including:
a) freed-ora kernel and not proprietary firmware;
b) real apps like every liveCD is expected to do in the world outside Desktop Team;
c) spanish locales because it would be distributed to people in events in LatinAmerica;

of course, excluding another decisions i didn’t take like.

And i’d call it Fedora Freedom². Because i want attribution to Fedora, not to me, because i don’t like Blag statements about “overthrowing corporate control” and yet using Fedora repos.

Of course i could request for reimbursemente support as i’d like to distribute in installfests, and another events representing Fedora and how we area big community with freedom to tinker and still being part of the whole ecosystem.

Or, because i wouldn’t adhere to trademark control of Fedora by RedHat, i can’t do anything of this, and yet call my packaging of Fedora, actually Fedora.

That’s not how you would do it, no. If I take rose petals and crush them into a tincture, it’s called perfume, not a rose. You change something enough to be unrecognizable and it’s not the same, so of course you shouldn’t call it by the same name. Making Fedora means making Fedora, not taking Fedora like it’s a bucket of parts and constructing anything you feel like and calling that Fedora too.